W.H. faces key test on Libya crisis

The crisis in Libya, brought on by the bloodiest of the series of revolts in the Middle East and North Africa, is forcing President Barack Obama to balance his impulse to show American leadership at a historic moment with his sense of the limits of U.S. power and his multilateralist inclinations.

Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009 established his ambitions to be a transformational figure in the Muslim world, and the White House has been eager to cast him in that light and to make the case — as press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday — that the U.S. has “done, already, quite a lot” in Libya.

Story Continued Below

Prominent neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz and Elliott Abrams have accused Obama of being slow to speak out in support of the revolt against Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi and for following the lead of European countries such as France to action. But even those critics are primarily calling for louder moral support for the “Arab Spring” and, in the case of Libya, a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone, not for American boots on the ground.

Obama hasn’t spoken publicly about the civil strife in Libya since last week, but according to the White House, he has been working the phones with his counterparts in Europe and Canada, laying the groundwork for international action that began last weekend with the unusually swift passage by the United Nations Security Council of a resolution sanctioning the Libyan leadership and referring their actions to the International Criminal Court.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice have spoken with increasing force against Qadhafi. But Clinton on Tuesday was clear about what she regards as the dangers of a military response.

“If you follow, as we follow, all of the websites that are looking at what’s happening in the Middle East, you see a constant drumbeat that ‘the United States is going to invade Libya to take over the oil — and we can’t let that happen,’” she told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, adding a second justification of earlier White House warnings that posturing could have endangered American citizens who had not left the country.

Administration officials have ruled out the notion of involving American ground troops in what could become a complicated, unpredictable civil war. But the U.S. is now openly considering the idea of a no-fly zone for Libya’s air force, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Tuesday that the administration was considering a military response to Qadhafi’s attempts to beat back the rebellion.

“We also have to think about the use of the U.S. military in other countries in the Middle East,” Gates told reporters. “I think we’re sensitive about all of these things, but we will provide the president with a full range of options.”

Meanwhile, European countries, which rely on Libya for gas supplies and could face refugees from regional instability, have moved more quickly to condemn Qadhafi and to take action.

“If you compare their response to that of any of the major European allies — the British and the French, even the Germans or the Italians — the administration looks like it’s hanging back,” said Jamie Fly, executive director of the conservative Foreign Policy Initiative.

France, in particular, has taken aggressive steps, sharply condemning Qadhafi and sending the first humanitarian flights to the country — though its moves are partly driven by embarrassing revelations that top government officials, including the recently canned foreign minister, vacationed late last year with the now-deposed Tunisian and Egyptian leaders.

American conservatives are calling, most of all, for a return to the outspoken “moral clarity” of President George W. Bush’s first term. They would have liked, in particular, a clearer, earlier identification of the United States with Libya’s opposition and democrats across the Middle East and North Africa — and they would have liked it in the form of a clarion presidential address, not statements from lower-ranking officials.